5.29.2008

There are a lot of things I've been catching up on while I bask in the Dutch humidity-sans-sun, among them: sleeping, eating ice cream, and sleeping.

I suppose it's time to catch up on the blog posts, too, but it's always harder when it's been longer since the last time. What to talk about? I went to Eastern Europe the night finals ended and met privately with members of Estonian Parliament, representatives of the Latvian Finance Ministry, and assistant directors of the Vilnius European Capital of Culture Project.

I'd like to say that I suffered a great deal of complicated hoop-jumping to grab those opportunities (and the stuff!) but our fellow student and fearless leader, Hans, did everything. As it turns out, in this case by "everything" I mean he just emailed the aforementioned figures, who apparently were so tickled Western Europeans were interested in visiting that they pulled out all the stops.

The biggest boon of my previous weeks of utter suffering has been finally having the time to enjoy Utrecht. Almost for the entire semester, I have used Utrecht as a means to other ends; for the HEMA to get A4 paper, for the Albert Heijn to buy a snack at the train station, for the Dmitri's to get a delicious 5 euro gyro. For the first time, I get to enjoy the city on its own terms, and that's a relief. It's almost a shame, then, that I am only here for another few days before I am off again.

I pick up a Berkeley friend studying in Lyon later this afternoon at Utrecht Centraal, and who knows what a homework-free weekend will bring.

At this point I am trying to tucker myself out as much as possible, in hopes that I will be thankful to take my summer course the day after I get back to the US.

5.14.2008

I was bored last night, and the prospect of actually doing relevant work on my two final papers just didn't seem interesting following the completion of a final for which I studied altogether too much.

So I took a practice LSAT.

I realize this makes me sound like a really big dork, that in the time I spend procrastinating I play online Scrabble and take diagnostic LSATs, but (and this will make me sound even dorkier) I actually enjoyed the questions. Like, this is what I had hoped my SATs would be like, and yes, it's challenging but not impossible.

I have been told that law school is nothing like the LSATs. And that's good, because I don't much like standardized tests. I thought about grad school but that might require me to take the GRE, and I've heard rumor that there is a math section. I haven't even looked into the possibility that math isn't actually a part of every GRE, that it's only for the relevant subject GREs, but I don't care. I am that afraid of math.

I guess this means I have no idea what I want to do with my life. Yeah, law school seems interesting if anything to be one of those people who walks around judging the 60% of graduates who become lawyers. "Yeah, I went to law school, but I decided not to be the tool of a corporate black hole." In other words, "Yeah, I went to law school, and it was a big waste of money because I didn't want a job that pays me $145,000 to get the boss some coffee." But it seems like a lot of money to blow on general interest, especially because I am picky and would only want to go to the best school possible. I don't know, maybe attending a highly-ranked undergraduate school has made me all high and mighty, but I don't see any point to applying to a school I have no plans to attend.

Then there's theater. I love stage managing. I love the camaraderie of rehearsals and performances and stealthily making a lot of things possible on stage, and I feel like I'm good enough at it (at least with the work ethic) that I can make a relatively stable, if not unusual living.

But since I've been doing it so long I feel like it's my safe bet. I know it's there, I know I can do it and that I would enjoy it, but I don't know if ten years from now I will feel like I settled for the path of least resistance.

So there are my anxieties. I think I am ready to be back in Berkeley, if anything because I know that I do not spend my spare time taking admissions tests for fun.

5.01.2008

I know I don't post often anymore, and believe me it pains me that I can't even maintain the one thing I wanted to keep doing while I was abroad because I'm so busy abroad.

Excuses aside, Queen's Day (Koninginnedag, as it's called) was a hoot. The picture I've included is of the crowds, taken from a carnival ride in Amsterdam's Dam Square just before my camera battery died.

This was the light crowd. It got worse-- much worse-- as the day wore on and depending on where we were we didn't even have to set foot on the ground to move through thousands of people pushing and shoving each other along.

But now I go to Berlin with Brenda until late on May 5. Hopefully I will not go broke, but that remains to be seen depending on how many museums we end up in.